Flat-Pack Furniture: Eco-Friendly Cardboard Chair Designs

Designed for everything for dorm rooms to interactive children’s playrooms or even conventional living rooms, the creative cardboard chair and stool designs of David Graas have evolved considerably over time from simple style-free objects to highly stylized furniture designs.

His early works are incredible straightforward and if they are elegant it is only in their simplicity and the way that their form follows their function. Flat-pack, pre-cut sheets of cardboard contain easy-to-punch-out forms that slot together to make simple stools or chairs.

Later seating and surfaces follow similar industrial design principles and take advantage of the same structural principles that make these forms work as rigid, load-supporting objects. Though these are likewise sustainable designs, easier to ship and possible to recycle, the forms and curves of these iterations have become more resolved and central to the design process.

Graas has also experimented with more complex forms and functionality, such as this set of interlocking stools that is both geometrically more engaging and also more functionally compact and easy to store. In short, he is testing the limits of this material in terms of both form and function, seeing what we can make from an all-to-often ignored everday eco-friendly material.